Monday, August 04, 2008

The always interesting 3 Quarks Daily blogs an article from the City Journal, titled "Math is Harder for Girls," a response to a recent New York Times article that came to the defense of the fairer sex with a little statistical hootchycoo, proving in the process that, while journalists may not be very good mathematicians, chivalry is clearly not dead at the Times. Heather MacDonald points out, as I noted in an earlier post, that while mean scores are similar between boys and girls, boys tend to fall out on the outer edges of the bell curve--they are overrepresented among both the best and the worst math students. So to say that boys outnumber girls among the best math students is absolutely correct. Tamar Lewin, who wrote the original Times story, either considers this statistically insignificant, or just plain misreported it. Now I am not particularly interested in whether boys are better at math than girls or vice-versa. What I am interested in is the abuse of science for ideological purposes. When Lawrence Summers was run off from Harvard recently for speculating about this issue, I pointed out that what cost him his job was not what the data on the relative math skills of boys and girls were, but rather that he questioned the difference in the sexes at all. The bottom line is that to say girls are fundamentally different from boys in any respect will today get you run off from the our institutions of higher learning--those bastions of free inquiry and academic freedom. I imagine the Times coverage of this issue was driven by its politically correct ideological agenda. That is, in any case, its customary MO. With ideologues, science always takes a back seat to politics. Facts really don't matter to their position; all that matters is where they fit in their ideological Procrustean bed. In fact, I wonder what the folks over at the University of Kentucky's Gender and Women's Studies program think of all this. Where do the conservative members of their staff fall out on this issue? Oh, I forgot. There aren't any conservatives there.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

repeat post - didn't get through the first time?

http://stats.org/stories/curveballs_math_sex_oct02_06.htm

"Those who defended Summers seemed to have some powerful data on their side, pointing to the SAT scores to explain why men perform both better and worse than women in math: The bell curve was shallower for men – there were more dunces at one tail of the curve and geniuses at the other - than there were in the curve for women. In other words, fewer women than men were as dumb or as brilliant at math: men are more varied in performance on these tests, while women tend to clump in the “middle.” Summers referred to this phenomenon as "the availability of aptitude at the high end."

Assuming that the SAT scores in math are a proxy for the kind of intelligence required to be a world-class researcher in math and physics, then men will dominate that part of the bell curve 3.5 to 4 standard deviations from the mean. "

1) "Another mistake made by those who defended Summers’ theory is the conviction that these test scores are measuring something innate, when there is a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise. One of the most persuasive arguments is that the gap between the genders is diminishing; girls now score higher on these tests than they did twenty years ago, and even twenty years ago they did better than they had done fifty years ago. If the tests were measuring innate talent, we would not see significant differences from one generation to the next. Even if there weren’t problems with using test scores as a proxy for talent at the highest levels in science, the evidence suggesting that the measured differences are innate is, from an academic point of view, woefully weak. As the NAS noted, the gap between males and females at the very highest end of mathematical ability is narrowing."

2) "Moreover, there is no such difference between test scores in Japan, while in Iceland women do better than men. If you reduce mathematical ability to gender differences, you have to find a plausible way of explaining away these highly inconvenient facts."

jah

PS "What these critics missed is that there are real problems with using SAT scores (or other test scores) as a proxy for mathematical ability and intelligence at the highest level. As with all tests, the SAT measures exactly what it tests: the ability to quickly solve specific problems correctly on a high-pressure, timed exam.

Invariably, there are students who are poor test-takers but good “thinkers;” but more to the point, while the resulting scores may indicate “achievement” or “mastery” of a certain skill set, they cannot distinguish those who are truly brilliant from those who are just “very good” at the skill set.

There are also an assortment of extremely important skills involved with success as an academic that are not measured on these tests at all – skills like perseverance, patience, time commitment, interest, ability to work with others, ability to manage many projects together, ability to express ideas to others, ability to bridge different topics and make connections between different fields, and so forth.

When scientists are asked to list the “very best” scientists in their field, reputation derives not from the ability to perform basic computations quickly, but rather from the ability to generate deep ideas that have a profound impact on science. This simply cannot be measured with test scores."

Note: I don't think Summers should have had to leave because of his remarks. Nonetheless, the evidence as presented by MC raises several questions. Why don't all countries have the same disparity at the upper level? Why has the upper-level ratio changed recently?

These are legitimate questions, but my main point was the NYT doesn't contribute to an informed debate by focusing solely on average scores of males and females and ignoring the other statistical characteristics indicated by the data.

I doubt standardized tests tell very much. Some years back I discovered my GRE scores were high enough to get me into Mensa if I wanted to join. However, I declined to do so after attending one meeting. The president (Dr. Lackey) was the calculus instructor I earned a "D" from in third semester calculus.

MC: my main point was the NYT doesn't contribute to an informed debate by focusing solely on average scores of males and females and ignoring the other statistical characteristics indicated by the data.

I would recommend putting that in the post then; my reading indicated two points:

1)"So to say that boys outnumber girls among the best math students is absolutely correct."2)"what cost him his job was not what the data on the relative math skills of boys and girls were, but rather that he questioned the difference in the sexes at all."

[I agree with two but not one (implications of at least).]

jah

PS I was also confused by "Facts really don't matter to their position; all that matters is where they fit in their ideological Procrustean bed." I'm trying to think of interpretations, especially the fitting in the Procrustean bed part, but coming up short.